Recent content by Shortround6

Does anybody go to Glasgow to get a tan?

That means I was a young whippersnapper in 2011 ;)

Going through the Italian artillery listings makes for some dismal, depressing reading. The Italian army in 1939 was pretty well set for going into combat in 1914 as far as artillery goes. This was the 'standard' Italian 75mm field gun in WW II. A licensed version of the Krupp 1906. Fitting...

These changes in radio equipment and ranges may help to explain the lack of interest in single seat, long range escort fighters before the war and early in the war. If you want to be able to communicate at 'long ranges' you need a bomber size radio, a big antenna and often a Morse code key...

And that is in early June ;)

Liquid fuel?

The Italians in the 1930s and WW II depended on a lot of pre WW I and WW I artillery, a lot captured. Italians had acquired almost 2800 of these 10cm Austro-Hungarian Howitzers (captured or reparation's ) during/after WW I and these made up the bulk of the Italian field artillery. Around 1700...

Italy spent too much money on the Navy and on the overseas 'adventures'. Scaling back the Spanish involvement to even 90% would have saved 33 million dollars. Italy's need for 4 Roma class battleships was rather questionable if the goal was to match the French Navy. The French had invested far...

We value displacement a bit too much. What is not listed here is weight, which was much more important to the aircraft designers than displacement. Engine.............................Displacement/cu................RPM.........................weight...........................power/altitude...

You really need a suitable turbocharger. Please look at the P&W R-2800 as it had single stage superchargers, two stage mechanical superchargers and two stage with turbo. With a turbo it could make 2000hp at 25,000ft (more or higher later with better turbo and controller) but only 1650hp at...

There is/was a big difference in the air cooled engines and the liquid cooled engines. The Air cooled engines were very often cooling limited. If you made more power you made more heat and you cooked the engine (cooked the oil in the cylinder bores) which lead to failure very quickly. They also...

Depends.............................. The Axis did not take Malta. Gibraltar was easier (not easy but easier than Malta) to resupply. Supplying even a small army/air force in Spain was not going to be real easy from France or Italy. British Navy/subs may have something to say about ship traffic...

Hell, it will be tomorrow before I am ready for Monday!

Some time in 1943. The Allison 'coupling' was a lot simpler than the DB 606/610. The DB coupled engines could shut down one side and decouple it from the prop. The Allison kept both crankshafts geared together at all times. Allison also used one big supercharger at the back and not one on each...

Douglas did get the XB-19A close to 40,000ft (39,000ft) using four Allison W-3420-11 engines with turbos, maybe somebody has got the weight? 2600hp from each engine and with the turbos it could make 2100hp per engine at max continuous at 25,000ft. Max speed was 265mph at not listed height...